


for they shall all bow

by lucrezias-sparklyhairnet (shedseventears)



Category: The Borgias
Genre: Choking, F/M, Light BDSM, Murder, grasping for power, implied cunnilingus or is it even implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 09:54:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shedseventears/pseuds/lucrezias-sparklyhairnet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucrezia closes the door on any other kind of life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for they shall all bow

**Author's Note:**

> Someone asked me to write about how I think the season might end. Thus, I took a lot from the 3x09 and 3x10 synopses, which you can find on cbspressexpress.com under Showtime's "The Borgias Season 3" page. I also took into mind Francois Arnaud's comments about Cesare and Lucrezia having a "Lady Macbeth" type relationship and Holliday Grainger's comments about Alfonso being somewhat of a Juan-type character at the end of the season. So this was born.

**for they shall all bow**

                One stole from Cardinal Sforza’s rich and golden home.  Another killed his employer over the love of a woman.  They all hang their heads low and offer their necks for the Castel Sant’Angelo and the dark man who stands at its balcony.  He might be a wolf, tongue lolling from his jaws, licking at his fangs.

                God may pardon them yet; for there does stand the white-clad elder, not so magnificent as he once was.  Wizened now, as if the son has sapped him of youth and vitality, eaten away the extra fat that once sat in his cheeks.  But he is their Holy Father still, and so the one felon lifts his head, raises his eyes to the pope.

                Alexander VI raises his hand, and they all tense in anticipation; for their crimes cannot be any worse than Valentino’s.  Valentino, who holds Caterina Sforza in this very dungeon of a palace, who is said to retreat to his sister’s bedroom each night and settle between her legs, to lick the sweat off her belly.

                The thief saw him once before he was the great duke, when his chest bore red instead of black.  A boy with a cross too heavy for his shoulders, a glower etched permanently across his face.  But now he smiles and leans over the balcony, and he asks them, laughing, if they would all say a prayer for God’s forgiveness.

                “And then we might all see each other in his Holy Kingdom.”

                Their murmurs rumble across the crowd—so many, and that does lift their spirits.  For surely, standing in a clearing empty of axes or swords or gallows, they could not be executed in this way.  There are guards to be sure, but what a task that would be, unheard of in Rome.

                The pope raises his hand, fist curled as he prepares to signal the pardon for which they all wait.  As criminals go, they are far from the worst, their hands dipped in petty offenses and crimes of passion, never to be repeated for fear of their lives.  None expected to see Valentino.  And that in itself will keep their heads low.

                The duke lashes out, quick as a snake to take his father’s wrist.  “Holy Father.  If their lives were so difficult and hard thus far”—and the thief’s stomach clutches, bile rising in his throat—“that they had to resort to crime…  Surely it would be God’s will to relieve them of that burden.”

                And now they see the servants standing in the shadows, one marching forward to give Valentino a crossbow (the latest invention, of course).  He runs a black-gloved hand over its smooth edge, his ring glittering in the hot Roman sun. They might see the blood about his lips, the place where someone has left a tiny puncture, a ragged tear.

                There is no question.  The great pope has been cowed by his son, and his shoulders dip in a sort of relief—that he has had these matters taken from his hands.  He retreats, says something too low for the prisoners to hear.  A prayer for their souls, likely.

                “You have all been judged by God to be wicked,” Valentino calls out, attention on the crossbow he readies.  “But perhaps more importantly, you have been judged by the law.” His eyes are black across their trembling bodies.  “For who now bends their knee to God?”

                The first arrow sings before anyone might see it, bursts scarlet against a non-believer’s throat.  Valentino tilts his head, as if he might hear the gurgling blood from where he stands on high.  And then he begins again.

                His aim is true; there is a reason why they talk of his prowess with weapons, the sureness of death that would never befit a cardinal.  And when the first crossbow runs short, he is given another filled to the brim with arrows, does not wish to wait and reload the same one again.  

                For that, at least, they are grateful.

                Each arrow is deadly.  Not every single one is quick.  But that seems purposeful too, for he follows those gasps of pain, the long few minutes it takes for them to bleed dry with the twist of his mouth.  And he does breathe in their blood, laps it full.

                The thief still stands when the sun hits her hair, sparks against the jewels woven into that careful net.  The Duchess of Bisceglie does sidle up behind her brother, rubs her hands over his shoulders so that he must, for a moment, stop shooting.

                He does kiss her full on the lips, the wet smack that could be dismissed as Italian if they were, in fact, Italian.  And she laughs, beckons him to return to his work.  If she fears him as they say the pope does, it does not show, does not quake or look away.

                “I invited your husband to watch,” Cesare Borgia murmurs, hitting one man square in the chest.  He sighs, waits for the next crossbow.  “Charlotte bore a girl, you know.  If I should die tomorrow, I would leave it all to you.  And that would leave it all to—“

                “Then tend to your will.”  Lucrezia stretches on her toes, tongue flicking against his neck as she speaks.  “For Alfonso cannot abide by the sight of blood.”  _Give it all to me.  Let me wield that sword._ And last night he followed her fingers with his, traced those words across the sword across her skin.  _Caesar or nothing._ “He presses me for a child.”

                Cesare’s eyes flicker to hers; to her belly, her breasts not yet filled with milk.  “You might yet give him one.”

                But they both know that Alfonso has not touched her in months; and that if she is to have her way, the next time he will would be to keep his mind from suspicion of any babe yet to come.

                “The idea of him touching me sours my stomach.”  But that does not seem likely.  Alfonso’s eyes have drifted from her since their return to Rome, his hands distant and unsure.  “For you know he is only tender and kind and gentle with me…”  Down goes another man.  Her hand travels down his stomach, brushes against his groin.  Any who would watch will only fall dead.  “As you are not.”

                Her throat still bears the bruises of last night; and her ladies did raise their eyebrows as they rubbed concealing ointments and powders over the marks.  For Alfonso’s hands are made for holding his favored puppies and painting lovely scenes of flowers and fields—not for choking her ‘til she might not breathe, letting her go so that she may scream.

                “Do you like this?”  He asks; and the thief falls, an arrow sticking from the side of his neck.  And after this the guards will collect the ammunition, have the servants clean what is yet reusable.  “Or would you rather wear black, like me?”

                An offer.  Mocking, likely, for her brother so does like to mock these days.  _Shall I kill your husband for you, dearest Lucrezia?_

“Sometimes—“  But Alfonso is sweetened still, and to kill him would be to kill a child.  Cesare may tear through soft flesh.  But not her.  Not yet.  Lucrezia presses a kiss to his neck, rough and not without teeth.  _If I could eat him whole._ “When you are finished with your prisoners—“

                “But I nearly am.”  Cesare sets the crossbow aside, snatches her up before she can react.  His hips grind against hers, her back pressed to his chest as they face the sea of dead and dying together.  He does place the crossbow in her hands, guides her along each mechanism, the trigger, the power of life and death.  “Aim.”

                She is the weapon now, set upon the last man.  More of a boy, really.  Not so much older than Alfonso.  And what did he do?  Bed the wrong lady?

                His fingers take hers, push them where they might.  His breath is on her neck, and she thinks of that first night.  The night they sealed their fate.

 “Fire.”

XXX

                They are feasting over Caterina Sforza’s body.

                Not literally, of course.  She is alive, if not well, in the Castel Sant’Angelo.  But her forces are dead; _her_ Forli dead; and the creature that was the Tigress is dead, replaced by just another woman, mortal and fallible.  Another legend laid low by Valentino.

                So Alfonso d’Aragona watches as his wife wears flowers in her hair, her dress cut low so that she might be Venus, all sex and fecundity in her brother’s eyes.  And they do dance; they feed each other sweets and bits of tender meat, the blood of rare beef running down their jaws.  It mingles with wine, all that red setting the Vatican aflame.

                He remembers that time on the road to Rome.  Lucrezia, disheveled in their carriage; her cheek pressed against the window.  The baby wailing quietly.  And as the bits and pieces of the past months ran together in Alfonso’s mind, he began to question—

                _My uncle the king—_

_The new king—_

_Did you—_

She had taken his hand as she always did, stroked his cheek with a maternal sort of affection. Lucrezia—his wife, Lucrezia—was a creature of light still, despite the shadows beneath her eyes and the blood on her hands.  _No, no.  It could not have been her._

That business was for the pope, for Cesare Borgia.  Not Lucrezia.

                She had looked out again, recognized something of the men on their chargers—the armor, the banners, the man ahead of them all in his cloak and glinting steel.  Lucrezia gasped then, call for the man to stop their carriage, brought her hand to her throat.

                “What is it?”

                She never answered.

                Of course it was Cesare.  Cesare headed to Naples, Cesare having heard whispers of their imprisonment.  He is even greater now than he was when Alfonso last saw him, the Borgia bull emblazoned everywhere, along with those precious letters:

_SPQR._

She wrapped her arms around his neck then, brought him close to bury her face in his throat.  He was bruised and bloodied from a recent battle, still watchful, still ready to strike.  “My sister…”

                No care for the baby.  No care for Alfonso, though he expected much.  But as they pressed their forehead together, ran their fingers over one another’s faces—as Lucrezia wept, pressed her lips to Cesare’s cheek—Alfonso remembered the whispers in Naples.

                _They say she’s fucking her brother._

Things he hadn’t listened to.  Things that seemed rumor until he saw Lucrezia with Valentino; ‘til he entered a marriage where love was rare and sex frigid. 

                And now he watches them slink out of the banquet, rubbing the blood and wine from one another’s faces, laughing and heady and drunk.  He imagines Cesare unlacing his wife’s gown, shaking her hair loose for him to run his fingers through.

                He dreams of Lucrezia on the papal throne, her brother’s face between her legs.

                “When will we return to Naples?”

                Lucrezia lifts her head; she is poring over some document that she won’t bother to tell him about, her lips curved smugly.  It’s likely a letter from her Valentino; for they are in Rome now, and within Rome they need not hide.

                “Why do you ask?”  She slides a grape into her mouth, eyes stuck fast to the parchment.

                “It is my—home.”  My kingdom, he would say.  But it never will be.  “Your home.”

                Her gaze flashes dark.  Lucrezia is a Borgia; and the Borgias are Rome.  Always in Naples she side-stepped, hesitated over having her hand kissed, wrinkled her nose over the filthy peasants.  In Rome she slumps luxuriously, yawns and stretches in the sun.

                “Naples is unsafe, my love.”  She presses her lips against his, a kiss chaste as a sister’s should be.  “And it will be until the king is dead.”

                _And did you kill the last one?_ He’d seen the way she’d watched his uncle eat, watched him breathe, counting the moments until he dropped dead.  And finally, he did.

                Alfonso was never one for drink.  But now cup after cup of wine has gotten to his head, and he forgets himself—takes her arm a little too sharply.  Lucrezia flinches; not because it hurts, but because she is unused to her little husband’s hands in this way.

                “You married me.  You joined _my_ family.”  His voice all but trembles, each word an effort.  “Is that not what wives do?”

                Perhaps not what this one does.

                But Lucrezia smiles and quiets him with a pat on the cheek.  “You, my love. You are the light amongst all the darkness in this Vatican.”  Her voice turns low; and for a moment he might believe that she is telling the truth.  “A true innocent.”

                Or he was when he married her.

XXX

                It is a gathering of family, so some might wonder why Alfonso is there.

                The pope drones on about Cesare’s various successes.  Alfonso drinks and drinks until Lucrezia whispers to him that perhaps he should drink so more; and then he ignores her.  Valentino looks at his sister, looks at the crucifix he so recently gave her.  And that cross—that cross is like his touch, always resting between her breasts, _mocking_ Alfonso.               

                The way Lucrezia mocks him.  Her lips curve against the rim of her glass, kisses for her brother, whispers in his ear.  All the things he shouldn’t think about.

                But when Cesare looks at her in return, meets her eyes, Alfonso can only recall the public consummation.  The way he looked at her, sent her gasping—for now he knows.  He knows why she asked for him, why she asks for him now.

                _I must speak to my brother.  Family matters._

_Let me ask my brother, Alfonso._

“I knew you were liars.  All of you.”  Alfonso raises his glass, voice loud and braying.  He is teetering against desperation, feverish with Cesare and Lucrezia and their twin scorn.  “I knew that when I agreed to this marriage.  And you did have to beg, didn’t you?”

                “Husband,” Lucrezia begins pleasantly, reaching for his glass.  But he snatches her wrist, pins it down to the table.  A small noise escapes her throat, more surprise than pain.  Yet Valentino leaps to his feet, leans towards Alfonso.  And he is stopped only by his sister’s eyes, warning and reproachful.

                Alfonso sways, stands on the cliff that is his wife and her family.  “I did not know, however, how well you lied to yourselves.  The pope blesses his children.  But you are...”  He looks between his wife and her brother, one dark and one so, so light.  “Sinners.  And you know that.  You know that!”  He waves his arms, red drops of wine staining the tablecloth.  Lucrezia looks there, as if searching for answers.  “All of Rome knows that.  They know what you do.”

                He points to Alexander, at the head of the table, primped and bejeweled.  “Do you not worry over their souls? For to which level of hell will they be sent for—“

                “My sister has brought you to our house.”  And so Valentino cuts him down, voice like daggers.  “My father has welcomed you to Rome.  And I have let you stay.  Do not think, my lord, that we cannot send you back into the loving arms of your family.  Do look to those who have touched my sister thus in years past.”  Giovanni Sforza, his body strewn across his cousin’s table.  “Tell me their stories.”

                 Lucrezia draws her breath tight.  And she looks to Cesare.  “Brother—“

                “ _Sister._ ” 

XXX

                “He cannot hurt me.  He is too weak, you know that.”

                In the night, Alfonso whispers into her neck of the child he wants, climbs on top of her and plunges his fingers between her legs.  But he is drunk then, and so easily she pushes him off, remembers the boy who has lost so much since agreeing to marry Lucrezia Borgia.

                During the day he watches her, demands that she stays in their rooms.  He pays for spies who, of course, plead their cases before Cesare, cry out their loyalty.  For to spy against a Borgia in Rome is to ask for your throat cut.

                “I must watch you,” he says.  “Or else—“

                “Or else what?”

                But never does Alfonso say what he so suspects.

                “You are a Borgia,” Cesare snaps, pacing across the room.  “You are my sister, he should know that anyone who would harm you—“ 

                “I am Valentino’s sister.”  Lucrezia stops him with her hands against his chest, her lips pressed against his.  And he does relent a moment, allowing her tongue to flick into his mouth, her teeth to bite that place that they’ve already worn raw.  Breaking away, she presses her cheek against his, strokes his hair.  “And so he will not harm me.  But…”

                “But what?”  Cesare withdraws, his hands on her waist.  And she so wants a time when they need not worry about Alfonso.  When the world is theirs and nothing more.  “Do you want…?”

                “No!”  Lucrezia shakes her head, that tantalizing question hanging over them still.  _If I so wanted it, Cesare would turn armies._ “No, I don’t.  I can’t.  When Alfonso married me, he was a different creature.  He was kind—a boy for me to shape.  Like—“

                Like Paolo, whose face she can barely remember already.  So consumed has she been by her own blood.

                “But he has disappointed you.”  And Cesare is eager, so eager to kill her husband.  To take that last remaining figure out of their way.  Would it not be easy?  To let him do what he does so well?  “He has not made you happy as he promised he would.”

                “I am the one who has betrayed him,” Lucrezia says, the words thick in her throat.  For it doesn’t feel like betrayal.  It feels as if Alfonso has betrayed her by daring to notice.  By saying what he should not.  “Cesare...  It would…”

                He advances upon her—so dark now, so much bigger and greater than he was when they would lie in their mother’s garden.  Closing her eyes, she feels him push her onto the table, his hand sliding up beneath her skirt, over her leg, to that place he has so dominated these past few weeks.  More for him to claim, she supposes.

                “It would?”  And his breath is heavy, excited as he kneels before her.  Her brother’s blood seems quickened by only two things these days: war and Lucrezia.

                “It would make things…”  Her fingers in his hair, her fingers drawing her skirts up with the heat of his lips over calves, her thighs.  “Easier.”

                “So it would.”  His tongue against her inner thigh.  “It’s no betrayal, my love.”  And so he keeps speaking; and she should like to hit him for that.  “The world ours to do what we want with.”  His breath there; and not until now has she recognized that her brother is so much more than her brother—to everyone.  “You only need to ask and it is yours.”

                Then his tongue does what it will.  And with her head back, with her mind very far away, Lucrezia can imagine a life without Alfonso.  It shines; it glints the way her brothers teeth do on those long days in the sun.  It is sharp and unyielding like his fingers.  Grasping like his whole being. 

                After, when they’re both out of breath and laughing, when Lucrezia sees that her brother is great and terrible and so ready to lay another heart at her feet, she kisses his wet lips.

                “You would do that for me?”

                “I would do that for you.”

XXX

                _So do it._

The words she whispered in his ear the day after, Alfonso’s shouts ringing in her head.  The revulsion in her belly at his scent, his hand wrapped around her arm, shaking her just a little.  And she never feared; she does not fear him still.  She was only tired.

                Her father asking her that morning over breakfast if there would be any children to soon think of.  Alfonso, laughing hysterically into his wine.  Cesare’s eyes lifted to hers, always questioning, that one fear, the danger neither of them can avoid. 

                “There will be no children, will there?” Alfonso asked her later, her back up against the wall.  “None of mine, to say the least.  Will you want me, then?”  His sweaty hand down her cheek, his thumb over her lip.  “To claim him as mine?”

                He smiled then, for he may have seen what he thought was fear.  But Lucrezia was exhausted, tired of bearing the insults and the weakness of it all.  The bothering, here and there and everywhere.  So she did slip up behind Cesare in his room, did rub her hands over his chest.  Did whisper

                _So do it._

Then there was nothing but teeth and lips and passion. Waking up in the morning, more bruised than she was before.  Her mind clear and her body screaming.  The salty realization, the memory of his grin, the way he would have pounced to do it _right then._

She’d tip-toed to her bedroom by the end of it all, as usual.  She’d slept on the other side of the bed, as far from Alfonso as possible.  And she’d woken, very briefly, to the feeling of him kissing her cheek, apologizing to her barely-conscious form.

                Now she remembers.

Alfonso.  Young and stupid, but not harsh enough to be condemned.  Like that prisoner at Castel Sant’Angelo.   She could have him sent away, locked up, returned to Naples and exiled from Rome.  She does not want his heart, on a dinner plate or otherwise.

                The boy who was once so sweet—if he is gone, it is by no fault of his.  If he is to die, then she will be like Cesare in all the ways that she already is; but there will be no more hope for a life outside of that. A life outside of blood and diamonds, a life for her son that doesn’t sell him off to some far-off land. 

                _Perhaps I should make him my heir,_ Cesare had mused afterwards, her head on his chest.  _Giovanni._

And she had delighted then.  But the sword for Giovanni, the Romagna—so tantalizing and glorious.  But it is a door shut, too, isn’t it?  A door shut on happiness, on a love outside of the family.

                Everything.  All of that gone with Alfonso.

                She hears the screaming before she could find Cesare.  Looks out the window and finds people gathering on the steps.  And the blood cannot be Cesare’s; she does not even fear that.  It’s slick and sticky and strangers are already stepping in puddles.

                Alfonso is so broken.  Even moreso than he already was.

                Cesare, beautiful and tall and striking against his own carnage.  Cesare, grinning with his kill before he sees her face.  The knife in his hand, for he need not deny, need not justify.  Already they bow before him, promise it had to be done.  For no one touches Valentino.

                “My love.”

                And she puts a hand over her mouth to swallow how she has become him.  To say goodbye to any other kind of life.  To close the door on her future.

XXX

                She asked for it, of course.

                She asked and didn’t ask.  For Cesare would have killed Alfonso anyhow.  To have her word was lovely; but Naples has always been a thorn in his side.  She knows that.  And she has always been the grand prize.

                It’s easy to soothe her husband’s pain.  To cut what would have been days of bleeding and groaning short with a bit of poison.  Her father frets over what a terrible thing this has been.  What a tragedy.  Yet when he says so, he looks not at Alfonso but his children, side by side, both stained with Alfonso’s blood.

                At last, he need not ask why Alfonso died.

                At last, they are one and the same.  Yet not in the way she would have wished.  And when she looks in the mirror she might find Cesare.  Murderous and vengeful, wanting everything he can’t have.  Taking it anyhow.

                There’s no escaping the family.  The stench of death, the sighs, the sin. 

                “Lucrezia.”

                Cesare stands at the doorway, in black as always.  He’s washed Alfonso’s blood from his hands.  But there is still lies, as it always will on hers.  How could she have judged Alfonso for his jealousy—when he had everything to be jealous of?  When she and Cesare had committed a thousand crimes together, danced on their brother’s grave?

                She should have laughed and called him one of them at last.  For she did shape him after all.

                “Father wants you in mourning.”  Cesare crooks a finger, beckons her forward.  His hand is outstretched.  A question.

                And when she takes it, laughing, her hysteria smothered only by his lips, his snarl, she can finally relax, finally soften against him.  Accept that there will be nothing else for her.  No full happiness; no love without hate, without asphyxiation on the family.

                “There will no others,” Cesare growls into her hair, his hand around her neck.  Always around her neck.  “You can marry, but there will be no others.  For me or you.”

                And Lucrezia, looking into her reflection, sighs.  “How could there be?”


End file.
